Russia
has begun a partial evacuation of its citizens from Syria,
with 80 people crossing into Lebanon, where two military
planes are waiting to fly them home. The move is being
interepreted as a lack of faith by Moscow in the Syrian
regime's ability to safeguard Russian citizens from the
civil war that is steadily consuming much of the
country.

German Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière
has said that if there is any military threat from Syria
to Turkey, NATO will respond to defend alliance member
Turkey.Were Syria to use its missiles against Turkey and
engulf it into an armed conflict, NATO would not abstain
from operating its Patriot anti-missile systems being
deployed along the Turkish border with Syria, Maizière
said while talking to the German Neue Osnabrück Zeitung
daily.

Syria’s conflict gives its Kurdish population an opening to rectify
historic wrongs and push for more autonomy, but facing
internal divisions, poor ties with the non-Kurdish
opposition and regional rivalries, its challenge is to
articulate clear, unified and achievable demands.

CBS News) INSIDE SYRIA, NEAR
THE BORDER WITH TURKEY - The head of the United Nations,
Nan Ki-Moon said Tuesday he doesn't believe Syria's
civil war can be settled through diplomacy. Russia --
one of the few countries still friendly with the Assad
dictatorship -- has begun evacuating its citizens.The
U.N. says about 60,000 Syrians are dead, and 650,000
Syrians have fled the country, most to neighboring
countries like Turkey.

ALGHOOZ,
Syria — The arc of Omar Abdulkader’s transformation
from farmer to fighter resembles that of uncountable
others in Syria, where since 2011 tens of thousands of
men have been drawn into a civil war.

MOSCOW
— About 80 Russian citizens crossed the Syrian border
into Lebanon and flew into a Moscow airport before dawn on Wednesday, a
small-scale evacuation that may signal the dwindling Russian hopes that President Bashar
al-Assad will regain control of the country. The move came as a United
Nations’ humanitarian official emerged after a rare
mission through the conflict zone to express shock at
the scale of devastation

Russia
began a small-scale evacuation of about 100 of its
citizens from Syria Tuesday, in what experts warn could
at any moment develop into a huge air-and-sealift of the
up-to-40,000 Russians and their dependents believed to
be in the war-torn country.